Classic case of don't tell me what I don't want to hear.

Playing live:

Once a friend of mine hurled a empty chip rack after a bad beat, and it smacked the back of someones chair at another table. It was a short-handed high stakes game, so no one there was going to say boo, but the guy who's chair it hit complained, and the floor felt obligated to investigate. Naturally my buddy was the one and only suspect.

So the floor had to ask, but he didn't want the wrong answer, so he carefully asked, "John, that wasn't you that threw the rack was it?"

"Rack? What rack? What are you talking about?" John answered.

The floor nodded, satisfied that he had asked and now could file a report, 'rack thrown by unknown person'.

And here you have the same, the bank has to ask, but they are not going to get verification. You just have to tell them something that will allow them to say they asked.

Don't tell them what they don't want to hear.

"My uncle in Greece sends me money from family investments, he is paying my way thorugh school since my parents died."

But for the love of pete, don't tell them you threw the rack!

OP, you did the 3 $9k transfers on purpose, didn't you? To avoid taxes, right? You can tell us... this is the Zoo.

slightly ot,

but i told my bank half-jokingly the first time they asked that i was involved in internet entertainment. the CS lady then actually asked what kind of etnertainment, and my response was to pause and then say "you know..."

pretty sure they all thought i was a porn star for the next year or so until i moved and stopped going to that branch

They've never asked any further?

If they did, what would you say? I was just thinking that if you told them that you won money in a poker tournament that took place in another country, it would be both honest and they would allow it.

hahahahahahahahaaaaa

Ooooohh we're gonna have a ****in blast at PCA

Wow, doing multiple $9K bank wires... You might as well tell them you're an arms dealer and you just landed a big contract with a Mr. Smith in Pakistan. You should be glad your trip report doesn't include waterboarding.

whatever you do don't structure.

oops too late etc etc.

How could you be this stupid and still win money at poker? Did you win a donkament or something?

Stopped reading here. LOL!

Structuring/Smurfing

Bank Secrecy Act

Note that the bank likely treated all 9 wires as 1 transfer for legal purposes, but that probably pissed them off a bit.

Wouldn't be surprised if you're under surveillance now too but I don't really have anything to back that up other than that I just went on an intense "The Wire" marathon over the last 2 weeks. If someone did some stupid spin off where Omar+Bodie+Stringer come back from the dead as zombies, I'd probably watch it.

"Bodie is you crazy!?"



" i will eat yo motha****in brain"

I would suggest going to fifth third as your bank, the entire place is full of immigrants that I'm sure don't report anything they're supposed to...and if they say a word about my transactions I will walk into their office and threaten to report the entire bank to the INS

i agree with you guys that its dumb to make three 9k wire transfers in a month, but i disagree that it was dumb to tell the truth. you can get in a lot of trouble with the IRS for intentionally recieving increments designed to avoid the 10k mark, so you better tell the truth once the bank notices. anyone that would lie about it at that point is a lot more of an idiot imo.

If my understanding is correct and the 10K mark people are referring to is a CTR(Currency Transaction Report)????? A Bank Wire DOES NOT equal Currency/cash by definition and NO CTR report is reguired to be filed...Now OTOH 3 9K wires in a month may trigger the bank to file an SAR...

Just re-read the OP and the taking the money OUT in CASH( if over 10K) would trigger a CTR....Why take that much in cash?????

why is everyone giving the OP a hard time? not everyone is educated on structuring and he was obviously ignorant in what he was doing...

OP, there are a ton of other banks you can open an account with...and now you know what NOT to do

either way, once you've done something that sends up those kind of red flags, its best not to compound the problem by lying about what's going on imo. if for whatever reason the matter gets looked into further, its really not going to be in your best interest to come off that shady right off the bat. there's no sense in lying when you haven't done anything that's going to get you into any real trouble. yeah, your account will get closed, bfd. i would have done the same. i'm not a criminal, and i'm not going to act like one. it kinda rubs me the wrong way how everyone around here encourages people to act like drug dealers or something.

agree that lying is not the best course of action. but there are ways to NOT lie, and NOT mention the words "Internet Poker"

You'd be an idiot not to close the account yourself and move to a new bank where you aren't on SUPER HIGH TERRORIST ALERT.

like what? you're just gonna say you work online? that's not exactly going to explain pulling down 27k in a month.

Why not?

No, they've never asked further. I'm not hiding income, so they don't care.

EDIT -- Actually that's not true. You have to deposit to Stars via wire transfer once before you can withdraw that way. So when I sent my deposit, I didn't know what country the bank I was wiring money to was located in. Needless to say they found that a little bit odd. I was just really vague and blew them off. I seriously think they were mostly worried I was going to come in a month later complaining about being scammed by Nigerians or something.

I've been called once by each of my banks. First time I was a little worried -- turns out they liked my business and wanted to know if there was any way they could serve me better. The other bank I didn't pick up and they never called me back.

To answer the obvious question, one bank lets me draw ridiculous amounts in cash in person at the bank with no warning, but has a stupidly low atm limit that they won't increase. Most of my cash is in this bank.

The other bank gives me dirty looks if I try to take out any reasonable amount in cash, making me drive around town to get $2500-$3000 per branch. I gave them advance notice like they requested for a large withdrawl, showed up and they still didn't have the cash. But the ATM limit is great. I keep a few thousand here.

whoaaaa tangent.

FWIW maybe you can go to the MAIN branch. At least here (Chase bank) they keep enough money in the main branch that I don't need to drive around to get 3-4k in friggin' 20's from every other smaller branch closer to me. Although the other branches are much closer it's easier to drive downtown if I need a lot of cash.

Also if you know you'll need it a week in advance give them a call to let them know. For that matter if you call them before that week's delivery date they can usually accommodate you

Main branch is not convenient unfortunately. Changing banks worked out really well. I'm less than 10 blocks from unlimited benjamins. Not a problem anymore.

As far as giving notice:
1) Sometimes I need a bunch of $ on short notice because I decide last-minute to go play poker elsewhere. Plane to catch, etc. Not so much this year cause of the supernova elite grind, but whatever
2) Like I said, I gave them plenty of notice one time, showed up and even got face-to-face with the guy that promised me the money who said 'sorry I thought we'd have enough but we don't'. Which is a lie. I had a busted leg and told them I wasn't even supposed to be walking on it (close to the truth), also told him I knew they had the $$ and to give it to me, so he did. They always have the $$, they just don't like to give it all to one person.

Bottom line: That bank sucks for that particular service. If you get an account with a bank that serves a lot of businesses (as opposed to one that does a lot of really crappy mortgages and now trades for under $1/share, had its bonds downgraded to 'Junk', and might fail by the end of the week), you'll get better results.

Me too, but I don't own a ski mask

uB,

Just wondering where you got that from. Not being an American, I don't have to put up with silly American laws about from where I can and cannot get money transfered to my bank account, so I may have missed some of the finer points, but, I always understood that the UIGEA prohibited financial institutions from transfering funds to unlawful internet gambling sites, but not transfers from such sites to individual customers. What have I missed?

no, seriously, not on purpose. Cashed first 9k and thought that'd be enough for the school and 1 week later i found out i needed more so I cashed another 9k out and then figured i had to buy flight tickets and new computers so i finally cashed the last 9k...